Might a Musical Make Main Street Sweeter?

I apologize that I missed sending out my weekly post last week. Between working on music and running a rehearsal for the Drop In mini-musical project, plus a five-day Improv and Nonviolent Communication Camp for 12-15 year olds, I couldn’t make it happen. But oh, what an incredible couple of weeks I’ve had!

It started two weeks ago, with a Aug 20-22 weekend workshop where 6 actors gathered to represent competing perspectives on Main Street and a Truth and Reconciliation Drop In. I had planned to assign one perspective each to 10 actors. But this project was more contraversial than I realized and I wound up feeling exceedingly blessed to get 6 actors total, four of whom joined up in the week and a half before the workshop began. So I wound up assigning each of them two perspectives — one each from opposite sides of the issue.

It’s hard to describe how it felt to watch these individuals, some of whom had very strong feelings about the issue, lend their voices to convey opinions that were diametrically opposed to their own. Their commitment to a process that could make dialogue possible was palpable and deeply moving.

That was the beginning, on Thursday. The plan on Friday was to divide into two groups and write two “I Want” songs; one from the perspective of a Main Street merchant who sees the Drop In as an obstacle to cleaning up the town, and the another from the perspective of a volunteer who sees the Drop In as a vital service. But we discovered that we were one “I Want” song short — we needed one from the perspective of a Drop In patron. Fortunately, one of our actors with Indigenous ancestry was also an exceptionally gifted poet, who was able to lean into personal experiences and observations in order to come up with the lyrics for that song, titled “See Me.” There weren’t enough of us remaining to divide into two groups, so we spent the full day working on the volunteer song, “Chasing Daylight,” and hearing the personal experiences of cast members, who had represented other’s views on Thursday night, but also had stories we needed to hear to do justice to the subject.

Normally, in a Common Ground Songwriting workshop, the primary task is to communicate the values held in common by participants on both sides of a divide. An “I Want” song is different. It needs to communicate the dreams (and often associated tensions) of a character. So the first step is to establish the character, and then give voice to their dreams and tensions, while being sure that the process is collaborative from start to finish. Without John Carroll, our visiting co-lead of Braver Angels Music, I don’t think it would have been possible. That meant that we spent Saturday morning and afternoon writing “Main Street Sweeter”, the “I Want” song for the Main Street merchant. That evening, we performed for specially invited community stakeholders: all 12 perspective monologues, two completed songs and the lyrics for a third. And we asked them for feedback.

Monday morning, I needed to string together all three songs (including a final one that wasn’t yet written) into a story arc for the mini-musical. The cast gathered that evening and improvised dialogue to pull that story together. Tuesday, I completed lyrics for a resolution song, and melodies for that and the remaining I Want song. Suno AI helped me complete that, plus orchestrated versions of our two songs that were written with just guitar accompaniment. Wednesday evening, we put it all together. Friday and Saturday, we rehearsed for about an hour and then performed for the community. We had about 80 people show up between the two performances, which was quite a few more than I’d expected. I don’t think we had many Main Street merchants there, which is too bad because I personally think the “I Want” song we gave that character was our best. But that’s part of why I’ve just posted the presentation on YouTube, so that those who weren’t able to attend will have an opportunity to watch and hopefully decide they want to be part of the dialogue.

For me, seeing it all come together was an affirmation of faith and a promise of exciting things to come.